Covenant Blog

To my great joy and gratitude, I joined the Covenant School faculty this year as an upper school humanities teacher. I would like to introduce myself and my role by saying a few things about what the humanities are and why we care about them at Covenant.

The study of the humanities, at least as we understand it today, arose in the Renaissance era (mid 14^th – mid 16^thcenturies). Fueled by the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman classics, Renaissance humanists looked to the distinctly human fields of history, languages, literatures, cultures, the arts, and philosophy to cast a vision for a healthier, more holistic society. In doing so, they dwelled on those questions that get to the heart of what it means to live well as a person: What are goodness and beauty? What are truth and justice? What is the good life? Still today, the humanities are a key means by which we reflect on these important questions as we seek to grow in wisdom and virtue. read more

Imagine that you are entering a classroom for the first time. What do you see? What are your first impressions? What images are speaking to your soul?  Many of us naturally adjust to our daily surroundings and therefore become numb to the messages they send.  Because the messages conveyed can be both clear and hidden, we must take a fresh look at our classroom environment.

Charlotte Mason, a favored educator of the 19th century, pioneered a return to the ancient methods of education. She believed that education was more than just stacks of textbooks, large cold classrooms and academic bureaucracy.  She argued that education is upheld by three pillars: education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. The first pillar, education as an atmosphere, will be the focus of this article. read more

By CRAIG HEFNER, PH.D.

What is the purpose of education?  

Every educational system and every school has an implicit answer to this question, whether it’s consciously stated or not. Some have proposed that education is solely for the acquisition of knowledge. Others suggest that the purpose of education is for equipping one for a successful career or for specialized training in a particular vocation.

While knowledge and skills for success are good things, they should not be education’s final end. Instead, classical Christian schools like Covenant are recovering the old idea that the formation of virtue ought to be the primary purpose of education.

After all, knowledge itself without virtue can be pernicious or even evil. Knowledge of medicine, for instance, might seem like a good thing, but such knowledge is evil if employed to produce chemical weapons with the goal of the mass destruction of human life. And training in a specialized vocation might help one secure a job in the short-term, but it has often left graduates without a sense of meaningful direction and purpose to their lives.

If we believe instead that the formation of virtue should be the purpose of education, then it’s worth reflecting further and defining the nature of virtue.

In the classical tradition, virtues are the habits that dispose an agent toward its proper purpose. So then we must ask ourselves, ‘what is the proper purpose of a human being?’ The human being is made in the image of God and endowed by God with a rational mind, heart, and soul. A virtuous human being, then, is one who habitually acts according to its purpose and who is perfecting proper habits of the mind, heart, and soul.

And this brings us to an often misunderstood point on the nature of virtue: Virtue is more than morality. In other words, virtues are not only actions of the heart, but include habits of the mind and soul. On such an understanding we could even make a distinction between three kinds of virtues: (1) Intellectual, (2) Moral, and (3) Spiritual. Therefore, a virtuous person is not only good in the moral sense but also in an intellectual and spiritual sense.

Here, then, is an incomplete list of these virtues, which defines more precisely the kind of student we strive to form at Covenant School. These definitions are partially my own, but I have also borrowed elements from the school handbook of our friends at Veritas School and from Karen Prior’s On Reading Well:

I. Intellectual Virtues

1. Love of Learning—demonstrates an eagerness and passion for learning through engagement in class discussion and unprompted learning outside of class.
2. Wonder—finds delight in mysteries of God’s creation and a joy in learning truth. Has a natural curiosity toward learning.
3. Imaginative—engages creatively with the world around them
4. Attentiveness—attends to classroom discussion and practices self-control in thought, word, and deed.
5. Orderliness—produces neat work that reflects the best of their ability
6. Teachable spirit—open to instruction and correction without defensiveness and makes intentional application of lessons to future assignments or situations.

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It was a rainy Tuesday morning, humid and hurried, as bright-eyed students hustled toward the school entrance, their excited steps marked by splashes of puddles on pavement. Dressed for adventure, their leather boots laced and their wide-brimmed hats secured, they passed through the threshold, all at once feeling hesitant yet hopeful, with a quest set out before them, a call to adventure, a familiar beginning to every great story.

Our first day theme, Adventure Awaits, was not just an opportunity for fun photos or for students to dress up like miniature Patagonia models, but a deliberate invitation into a better story, an opportunity to imagine themselves embarking on a mighty quest, to see themselves as the characters they read about in adventure books and watch on the big screen.

From ancient mythology to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the stories we tell point to an eternal truth, one where good triumphs over evil and love conquers all. Great literature endures because it sparks something within us that speaks to the very fabric of our being.

Our own DNA is itself a narration, written by A Narrator who pulls us to Himself. Because of this innate orientation toward something greater, stories have been resonating with our deepest longings for generations: Odysseus longs for home. Jay Gatsby grasps for identity. Captain America runs toward a purpose. And so on.

Every hero has a quest, a journey toward a resolution. The question we must ask ourselves, and our students, is then, where do we fit in this story? What is our quest and to what end are we pursuing?

The poet Walt Whitman asked this of himself:

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?”

His answer:

“That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

The powerful play goes on, and we each contribute a verse. It’s no wonder, then, that the word universe comes from the combination of two Latin words meaning, “one verse”, or, “one line of poetry”. The world is, to put it simply, one big poem. An eternal epic. And we are the characters.

The kindergartener in West Virginia is just as much a hero as the Greek Achilles—each on a quest, a journey in which, when we have the right compass, leads us home. Our students each have their own journey, their own individual quest for truth, beauty, and goodness, their own journey home.

Augustine wrote that to seek God is “the great adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.” This is the goal of Covenant School, the resolution we move toward—to seek and to find. With this end in sight, adventure truly does await our students this year, and for many years to come. Onward.

Franklin Norton is the Director of Marketing & Communication at Covenant School. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Advertising and Public Relations from Marshall University. He has previously worked on the communication teams for the Huntington Mayor’s Office, the Huntington-Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Marshall Artists Series, and Marshall University, where he also served as Managing Editor of the university newspaper. He believes in the potent power of story, and works to tell the Covenant School story in all its truth, beauty, and virtue, while building authentic and meaningful connections within the school community, as well as establishing strong partnerships locally. Mr. Norton is a member of Redemption Church and is a leader with the Greater Huntington Young Life ministry. read more